Science
by Potterworm
Summary: Every science experiment has its constants.


**Disclaimer: **April, Luke, Anna, and all other recognizable _Gilmore Girls_ characters belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, and the WB. No infringement is intended.

**Summary: **Every science experiment has its constants.

**Science**

**By Potterworm**

By the time April is eleven and a half, she is eighty percent sure that Luke Danes is her father. April has gone through her mother's old journals and memory boxes hidden away in the attic. The diaries have mentioned other flings, but Luke, well Luke, is the one sounds serious. Now, April's seen her mother's hurried scribbles, proclaiming hush-hush secrets of romance and passion and bemoaning children who come far too soon.

Her mother's always denied it, but there's something about the black pen on pale pink journal paper saying she's a mistake that finally makes April accept it.

At first this knowledge changes nothing; April and her mother are as close as ever. But April is an eleven and a half year old girl, and now it's not just puberty, it's this undeniable fact that separates her from her mother. April was a _mistake. _Her mother hadn't _wanted _her. Even if it was just for an _instant, _her mother hadn't wanted her.

By the time April is twelve, she wants to know why her mother hadn't wanted anyone else to have her either.

It's not that her mother doesn't love her (_now_), but this knowledge has been bubbling under April's skin for nearly half a year. She is a girl without a father, and somewhere, there is a man who doesn't know he has a daughter.

She wants to meet her father. She wants to know everything about him, and even though she tells herself it's all about her fascination with science and genetics and Punnett squares and wanting to know where she inherited her ability to roll her tongue from… she just wants to meet her _father. _

April scribbles in a green spiral bound notebook every afternoon for three weeks before she talks to her uncle. She makes him swear that he will not tell her mother (and he doesn't, at least not before it's too late for her mother to stop it). Then she rides her bike to Stars Hollow and spends a week and a half trying to talk herself into going into Luke's.

She spends those days after school when her mother thinks she's at chess club riding around Stars Hollow, not going close enough to the diner to be spotted, but getting enough looks at Luke to know that her 80% certainness is more like 90% now. She can actually see the familial resemblance in a way.

(That's what she tells herself, but really, she's starting to think that she just wants to be a part of a complete family; she wants Luke to be her father.)

While she procrastinates the inevitable, she tracks down two of her mother's old flings from twelve years ago. April had considered just picking random people off the street, or maybe even playing a bit with variables and constants by picking a family member as one of the candidates, just to show what DNA looked like among uncles and nieces or something similar. But although this project is far more personal now than it should be, April also wants it to be more accurate; she wants to see the DNA results and make models and _learn, _because at least if she's wrong about her father, science will still be there.

She finds Dave first, a fling her mother had only devoted a page and a half to. She walks up to him and tells him that she's doing a science experiment for school, and _mister, would you mind if I used your hair as part of my random sample?_

He looks bewildered, but seems to buy her sweet little girl routine. The same works for John later that day. April feels exhilarated that her project is coming together.

It's Luke that will be the hardest, because before the end when he had been distant (and something about a woman named Rachel?), he had been sweet and kind to her mother, and though it hadn't been all that serious, April can tell by the heart doodles in the margins of the diary and the whimsical wording that it could've been. If he's _not _her father, well, April's starting to fear that she'll never find him.

April parks her bike in front of his diner and walks up. She plans to be smooth and little-girl-sweet, but suddenly, as he grumbles at her, she sits down and is taking her bike helmet off, and she is babbling about _Who's My Daddy? _and he looks bewildered.

(He really hadn't known. She has always known that, but the bewilderment in his eyes is still a relief.)

She babbles about half mushroom, half Mizithra cheese spaghetti, pulls a hair, takes a picture, and then she is gone.

It takes her twenty minutes to get home, but only five to burst into overwhelmed tears. She rides her bike all the way, tears bubbling out of the corners of her eyes, and this is about science and the fair, and she wants to win, really she does…

April sobs as she runs to her room, and her mother is knocking on her door within a minute, and suddenly the whole story pours from her mouth, and she's telling things she didn't even know are true, but suddenly they are.

She wants to be wanted and loved and not a dirty little secret who had to be hidden from her father. She knows her mother hadn't wanted her, and she knows her mother wants her now, and she knows they're fine now, but couldn't they be better? She wants to be a part of something real and complete, and she wants to know where she comes from, and her mother just doesn't understand what science is doing to April.

Because science is about more than just questions and answers, it is about wondering. And April wonders all the time.

Her mother looks stunned by her hysteria, but April is not. Her life has always been variables, but now she's starting to realize the one constant in this whole thing has very little to do with finding out what kind of father she has and everything to do with finding out what kind of daughter she is.

Because April is quirky and nerdy, and her mother doesn't always have time to spend with her, and this isn't where her mother had wanted to end up, and when it comes down to it, sometimes she feels like she is just a girl without a father.

April always wonders.

**Author's Note: **April's a difficult character to write, especially since I don't particularly _like _her character, but this plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone, so I figured I'd give it a try. I'd love to know what you think.


End file.
